“Are you hittin on my man?” I shriek in their faces. And Gloria gets all about accusin me. “What did you think we were doin!” she shouts. Gloria was being what my teachers call rhetorical. It wasn’t a question.

Quick check: did you already know about our selection of tools?

“Excuse me,” I said, “I just saw you with your arms around Rudy’s neck, suckin on his mouth.”

Rudy is my main man who takes me skatin, pays the dinner bills, lets me choose which movies to see. That’s almost marriage, so Gloria had no right to do a mouth-to-mouth on Rudy.

“You want to be suspicious, go right ahead,” she shouted. “Do you know what controllin means? Socially abusive?” She stuck her surgically altered nose right up to mine. “I’m sorry I gave you an expensive birthday present. It should have been a tube of Preparation H cause you’re a pain in the ass.”

Oh, hey, it was my fault seein them kissin in my kitchen? At my own birthday party? Even before I finished openin my presents? Twenty-one is a sensitive time for a gal. It only comes around once and then — what? — old age? Dementia? Flatulence? Heart disease?

I had heart disease you wouldn’t believe, watchin Gloria walk out the front door on Rudy’s arm. And blue ice? That’s the stuff that comes out of airplane lavatories. <yeew>

I had seen the truth about Rudy. A real man is a woman’s best friend and never lets her down. He will comfort her and inspire her to do things she never thought she could do. He will enable her to be confident, sexy, seductive and invincible … No, wait. Sorry. I’m thinking of martinis. It’s vodka does all that. Never mind, Rudy.

“I wish you all good luck on your birthdays!” I screamed to the room. There were about eight so-called guests drinkin my beer. Eatin my chips. In my living room.

“My love was just thrown right in my face. With callous disregard. Indifference to my heart and the fact that it’s my birthday.” Okay, so the blue martinis were talkin.

“I’m going outside and end it all,” I announced grabbin my glass. A few heads looked up. Well, maybe just Angie’s. The rest were watchin basketball on TV. “I’m going to throw myself under….” There was no bus service this late at night. No cars even. “A tree!” And I slammed the door behind me. When the last blue cube melted I’d kill myself.

Standing on the stoop, the silliness got to me. My last birthday? No, there’d be decades more to come till I turned into a geriatric catastrophe. I couldn’t be jealous. That would mean Rudy….

I tried to mop up the martinis in my brain. Being jealous meant I believed Rudy was better’n me. That Gloria was prettier. That I should kill myself, but couldn’t come up with anything better than throwin myself under a tree. I began laughin so hard I had to pee.

“What’s so funny, neighbor?” Old Jenkins peered over the hedge.

“Only three hundred and sixty-four days to my next birthday. Ain’t that a hoot?”

Oh, and when Gloria was sticking her $3,000 nose job in my face, I noticed she had a goober in her nostril.

About Carolyn Foulkes

Carolyn Foulkes is the pen name of a U.S. writer who has published a dozen stories in the past year: flash fiction and longer pieces in the crime, gothic, spec fic, mainstream, and humor genres.